Dante Reading Group: Reading Purgatorio: Pleasure and Free Will in Dante’s Purgatorio

What is the relationship between ethics and emotions, pleasure and free will, in Dante’s Commedia? This lecture will explore Purgatorio XVI, where Dante reflects on human freedom, moral responsibility, and the necessity for earthly governance, despite its corruption. In doing so, it will focus on the ethical dimension of pleasure as it emerges from Dante’s verses (including Purgatorio XVII, XVIII, and XXVII), which will be evaluated within the late medieval reception of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.

Giulia Gaimari is an Assistant Professor of Dante and Italian Medieval Studies in the Department of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese & Latin America Studies (ISPLAS) at the University of Toronto, and is affiliated with the Book and Media Studies Program at St. Michael's College. Her research interests encompass the reception of classical moral philosophy within late medieval Italy and Dante’s oeuvre, the interactions between medieval encyclopaedic culture, civic rhetoric, and vernacular literature, and the intertwining of these areas within the history of emotions.